Posted on 12/01/2009 9:00:48 PM PST by celticchik
I am having an email argument/discussion with my son's social studies teacher. He distributed a study guide about how unfair it was that the founding fathers at the Constitutional Convention did not include African Americans, Native Americans, women and poor people. I discussed with my son who is 12, that the only people who received an education at the time were white wealthy land owning men. I disagree with the use of the word unfair and let the teacher know my feelings politely. It was indicative of the era. Why would we send uneducated people to a meeting to start a government? I simplified it by saying that I wouldn't attempt brain surgery because I do not have medical knowledge. Do you know of any history books written for middle school aged children that are written without a socialist agenda?
This is like criticizing the Sumerians for not writing in plain English.
| He (the teacher) distributed a study guide about how unfair it was that the founding fathers at the Constitutional Convention did not include African Americans, Native Americans, women and poor people. I told this to my 11-year-old daughter, and her concise common-sense response, spoken like a true Conservative tween, was: "Life's not fair." LOL. Do you know of any history books written for middle school aged children that are written without a PC agenda? There are many good non-PC books of the era, but might I recommend: You can see the WHOLE open-source text on the above Google Books link, and even download it as a Acrobat PDF file. I prefer the 1856 version, as it is written in the manner of the day, with good sketched photos, and is unaltered. The author obtained first-hand accounts via sources of the era and personal interviews, reporting on events that occurred during the years of the American Revolution. We know of this book because a few months ago, my daughter and I had to do a school research project on the patriot Hannah Hunter Hendee, whose story can be found on pages 204-210 of the book. If you wish to share this with your son — with MY daughter's permission — here's the paper she wrote about the heroine Hannah Hunter Hendee, who was only 27 years old at the time in 1780:
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Bookmarked!
Zap him !
If he’s a Social Studies teacher he should know history and accept and present it as it was without judgement.
If he’s allowed by the school to determine the mindset of his students, go to the School Board, take everyone you know, and demand he and the Principle who allowed him to spew personal bias be fired for teaching “biased revisionist” history. Accept and teach the actual climate of that history as it “was” or be fired for incompetence.
He has no right to determine right and wrong history particularly when he didn’t live in that era.
Another loser who is preying on children.
Didn’t include Native Americans?
Does this teacher not realize the tribes were *sovereign nations* at this date? The colonies made treaties with them as a matter of foreign policy. She might as well wonder why no Canadians or Mexicans were in the Convention.
Sorry I am new to free republic. I thought the intent was to get new members and to promote discussions. The first post did not show up so I thought I did it incorrectly. I do not understand your accusation of my “trolling” and posting a “vanity” youtube thread. Are you the monitor of this site ansel12? If so, I don’t think your accusations are very motivating to people new to the site.
After emailing my son’s teacher about how I felt about the study guide he distributed about how I disagreed about the use of the word unfair, this was the teacher’s email response. Note the spelling and grammatical errors. lol This is the garbage that our nation’s youth is being fed.
“We talked as a class how mostly the rich received formal education after grade school. Some children did not recieve any education at all until the mid 1800’s, when formal eduation took hold. The reason why I use the term unfair is because the delegates created a representative democracy, yet didn’t include all they were representing. We talked about why they wouldn’t include the genral masses in the convention, and most children agreed that they wouldn’t have included them either because they were not informed or educated. We linked this with the creation of the electoral college because the founding fathers were very leery of letting an uneducated public choose the President. I hope Tim, understood the education piece, I can clear it up in our next discussion too, because maybe some other kids are unclear in it as well.
If you have any other questions, please let me know”
Go to a used book store and check out some old civics books. Book stores often carry old text books for homeschoolers and collectors. Also, it is interesting to look at the older books written by men for boys.
The way I explained the evolution of freedom in America to my children: We started out with white men from Europe who basically hated each other overcoming their bias towards one another from different European Nations to become Amercians. Then we moved to overcome beliefs of sexual inequality. Then we moved to overcome racial inequality or the inequality of ethnic groups beyound Europe. European Nations have followed our lead. African, South American, Arab and Asian countries - not so much. (In Africa, they are murdering whites and albinos, for example.)
As they got older, I explained to them how the elite use race hate and unconstitutional preferences to divide people so they can get power. How they did it with the White majority in history and how they do it with the “diversity” majority (white women and minorities against white males) today. Actually, my oldest son saw this liberal craziness for himself and asked me if his observations were correct. I just made it clear that we don’t believe in race doctrines about any group even when a racist teacher still does.
I worked for College textbook companies in the early seventies through into the eigthies. I was amazed at the chnges which got incorporated into the texts in just a two year span, over and over again. An example is the ‘evolving’ definition of homosexuality, which was defined in an abnormal psyche text as abberrant behavior, then destructive life style, then alternate life style, then not even included finally in the definitions of abnormality. There were similar ‘evolutions’ of data in History texts and accompanying ‘readers’ used with various Humanities courses. If someone wanted to see the growing influence of socialism/liberalism infecting America, all you have to do is consult the texbooks of the fifties and early sixties as they ‘evolved’ over three following decades. The really pernicious devolution happens when a committee re-writes an old standard text whose author lived in the decades of the Depression and the second World War. During the early eighties, the committee approach to fashioning a PC text became vogue.
The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.
Ping to homeschoolers.
Someone is looking for history curriculum that gives an accurate treatment of history, not a PC one.
Check into classical education curriculum or http://www.welltrainedmind.com/
We used ABecka books for our homeschool history classes.
Don’t worry, cc. Some people have itchy trigger fingers because some disruptors DO have posting histories similar to yours. You’re obviously not a disruptor, so pay no attention to such comments.
This whole concept of applying today’s standards of thought to yesterday’s actions and posthumously judging them on it is ridiculous. Writing up a legal document and establishing a new government is not easy stuff. It does take people with minds to think, lawyers for one thing to cover the legal bases.
I wonder exactly what input it is that she thinks they should have had or would have had? Some of today’s touchy-feeling special rights nonsense?
Even though the Constitutional Convention was composed of men only, yes, educated, white men, you are right, it reflected the standards of the day, which did not include worrying about *being faaiiirrr*. They had more important work to do setting up the government than worrying about people’s feelings.
If you read the Constitution and Declaration of Independence carefully, you will not find anywhere where women, blacks, Indians, *poor people* (whatever that means) etc, are specifically excluded from the *all men are created equal* clause. So, just because it was white men who wrote up and signed the documents, doesn’t mean that they didn’t take others into account. They did the best they could at the time.
Thomas Jefferson moved to outlaw slave trade as soon as he could and signed a law making it illegal in 1807.
Now, these documents established our current government and the laws and protections included were for citizens. BUT, the laws of each individual state regarding citizenship are a different issue.
Also, it was not only *rich, white* people who received an education.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2005/is_n4_v29/ai_18600988/
Literacy was considered important in those days, because of the importance of being able to read the Bible. Children went to school when and where they could, and often, if they didn’t have access to public education, they were instructed at home.
So, while there is a disparity in literacy, not just wealthy, white, landowners who were the only ones to receive an education.
Honestly, teachers like your son’s are just one of the myriads of reasons so many of us homeschool.
Noticed (and thought of) by others.
Interesting posting history.
If you poke around on the HSLDA site, you might come up with a link to something.
I remember listening to a speech by Michael Farris where he talked about the Howard Zinn history book - NOT THE ONE TO GET!!! - being the PC history book of choice for colleges everywhere.
PS, found it:
Google “patriots history of the united states”
A truly awful book I encountered in college. Fortunately my homeschool education let me see just how ridiculously stupid it was.
www.notgrass.com has WONDERFUL textbooks, written by Ray Notgrass. I have them, you’ll like them
That is so true, and so unPC, but I repeat myself.
“White Christian Males” built this country and the concepts of individual liberty in Western Culture.
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